It's a good thing we all stood up for our principles and said "no" to mindless gimmick publishing.

Bleeding Cool published one of their sales columns tracking reorders for comics in the month of September, and to the surprise of no one, one comic stood tall above the rest of the pack: The Death of Wolverine. The series took 13 of the top 25 reorder slots this week, including the top eight spots, with its various $4.99 weekly issues and variant covers, ensuring that this blockbuster comics event will be a huge financial success for Marvel, even though no one in their right minds believes there's even the most remote chance that Wolverine will stay dead for more than a couple months at most. And because of that success, Marvel and DC will both feel encouraged to continue placing sales-boosting gimmickry above quality storytelling (not that The Death of Wolverine won't be a quality story - it is written by Charles Soule, after all - just that whether it is or isn't is completely irrelevant to whether or not it sells) and long term readership building for years to come.

So, thanks, morons. No matter how much we, as a fandom, complain about the non-stop gimmickry, never-ending event cycle, style over substance, ridiculous, transparent hyperbole, and short-sighted, greedy publishing strategies in this industry, every single time we're given an opportunity to fork over raping assloads of cash for one of these comics, we fall all over ourselves to do it.

For more on this, The Outhouse spoke to a fan who pre-ordered ten copies of every issue of Death of Wolverine. "DURRR DURRRR!" he told us, drool running down his chin. "DUR DE DURR DURR DURRRRR!"

The fan added that he wanted to make sure to get his hands on several copies of the weapon-etched holofoil variants, citing DDDUUUUUUHHHHHHHH as the primary motivation, and explained that he plans to keep the books in pristine condition so that they will grow in value over the years and he can sell them for a profit of perhaps DERPY DERPY DERP or even more.

He then went out to catch his fifteenth showing of Transformers: Age of Extinction.

Here's the reorder chart: